


Sober Thoughts

by onekisstotakewithme



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Bisexual Hawkeye Pierce, Bisexual Male Character, Episode: s08e16 Bottle Fatigue, M/M, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-30
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-05-16 05:02:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14804873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onekisstotakewithme/pseuds/onekisstotakewithme
Summary: "The outrageous tab was just the beginning. I started thinking, really thinking about all the drinking I do.”Tag to Bottle Fatigue





	Sober Thoughts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [flootzavut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flootzavut/gifts).



> For Floot, for her help and patience and for being an overall marvelous human being ♥♥

BJ wakes in the darkness, in the middle of the night, and doesn’t know why.

 His heart is pounding in his chest, the sound loud in the stillness of the tent.

After lying frozen for a few seconds, expecting the sound of choppers overhead, he relaxes again as he realizes what woke him: he’s no longer alone in his cot.

“Hawk?” he asks, his voice hushed.

“Beej.” It’s so vulnerable sounding that BJ immediately reaches for him in the dark, the week’s events forgotten.

The two of them sharing a cot isn’t new. They’ve done it plenty of times, have been doing it since BJ’s first night in Korea, when he was too young and heartsick to worry about the implications. They share the warmth, and comfort, and BJ always seems to sleep better with Hawk in his bed (he’d forgotten, before Korea, what it was like to go to bed alone). It usually happens after the tricky cases go wrong, after the gut-wrenching letters from home, or even just after the long Korean days bleed into the longer Korean nights.

And after the day they’ve had, the week they’ve had, is it any wonder? Today their lives were in the palm of Hawk’s hand, and BJ was one grenade away from going home to Peggy in pieces.

Without needing to be asked, BJ wraps his arms around Hawk, pulling him in closer. It’s a tight fit, but after so much practice, they’ve learned to get good at fitting together like puzzle pieces on tiny army cots, even if it leaves them a tangle of limbs by the morning (BJ can never bring himself to mind).

“Beej,” Hawk says into the darkness. “I’m sorry.”

BJ doesn’t have to ask what Hawk’s apologizing for. Hawk’s week of self-enforced sobriety has less than a day until completion, and it’s been hell for everyone. But no one has suffered so much as Hawkeye himself. Throughout his detox, he’s been surly and sanctimonious, his mood changing on a dime, and while BJ would normally be sympathetic, Hawk’s sobriety combined with Charles’ bigotry has made it a long week for all of them.

Of course, with everything that’s happened in the past twenty-four hours, BJ wishes that he’d been more understanding. They could have died today, and BJ isn’t sure if their last words to each other before OR were anything but curt. (If one of them does die in this war, and that’s frighteningly possible, BJ wants Hawk to know how loved he is.)

“It’s okay, Hawk,” is all he says, stroking Hawk’s hair. “You’re lucky, I’m not the kinda guy to hold a grudge.”

“No,” Hawk agrees. “Even when you should. I’ve been a jackass.”

“I haven’t exactly been the most compassionate either, Hawk.” _Someone is supposed to take care of you,_ BJ thinks, _and that someone is usually me._

“Well, that’s not your fault,” Hawk says. “It’s the war’s. You have enough compassion for all of Korea, and it gets spread all over, so of course by the time you get to me, there isn’t enough left. You’re too good for this war, Beej.” He chuckles to himself, nestling in closer. “Too good for this world too. Definitely too good for me.”

“I should’ve been the one defending you,” BJ says. “Not Margaret.”

“Yeah, well, maybe it was easier for Margaret. She doesn’t have to live with me. Or Charles of the Boston Bigots. You got a rough deal, Beej. It’s no easy task, dealing with me.”

“I think I know how to handle you by now.”

“Not when I’m sober. C’mon Beej, I was terrible… an actual fucking _toddler_. I just spent the better part of a week throwing a temper tantrum. You should be putting me over your knee.”

“Well, I would, but I get a strange feeling you’d actually _enjoy_ that,” BJ replies, grinning. “Besides, hasn’t a week of sobriety been punishment enough?”

“It’s never enough,” Hawk says.

They lie there in comfortable silence, the only sound their breathing, and BJ’s eyes are sliding shut, when Hawk murmurs something he doesn’t catch. “Whassat Hawk?”

“It wasn’t the bar tab that made me quit,” Hawk whispers.

This isn’t what BJ was expecting. “Then what was it?” he asks, after managing to gather his thoughts.

“I just… the outrageous tab was just the beginning. I started thinking, _really_ thinking about all the drinking I do.”

“Hawk, we’re under tremendous pressure-,” BJ starts, trying to defend Hawk, because Hawk will defend everyone else in camp before defending himself.

“No, Beej, listen. I’ve had all week to think about it. I’m always drinking. You’ve seen me in action. The O Club. Rosie’s. The still. Drinking’s my favorite hobby, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to quit after the war.” He stops for a second, and BJ hears his breath catch. “I’m scared that I won’t be able to.”

“Hawk-,” His throat is aching, and all he wants is to stop this, stop Hawk from inevitably hating himself more, but Hawk is on a roll.

“I’m an alcoholic, Beej. I have a problem.” Another deep breath from Hawk. “And I hate it. I hate how I can’t survive around here with a clear head, hate how even one week of being sober can turn me from me into some kind of monster. I don’t recognize myself in the mirror sober. And it scares me. It _fucking petrifies me_ that I can’t survive without the booze.”

BJ has to blink back tears at how raw Hawk’s voice is, because Hawk is clearly struggling not to cry. He wishes he could fix everything. It’s in BJ’s bones to protect the people he loves, but hard as he tries, sometimes even he can’t protect Hawk from himself.

_If I could take it all on for you,_ he thinks, stroking Hawk’s hair, _I’d do it. In a heartbeat._

“I thought that the drinking would make it easier to survive this place. And it did, but it also made it harder. I hate the idea of being dependent on the booze for the rest of my life. I’m scared of going home from the war and setting up a still in my living room, absolutely _fucking_ terrified of drinking myself into a downward spiral because it’s the only coping mechanism I know. I _hate_ it. I hate being dependent on anything. Booze.” He stops, clearly struggling. “People.”

It all becomes horrifyingly clear.

“Depending on things is how you lose them,” Hawk says softly, after a minute. “The booze eventually runs out, and then you go crazy because you can’t survive without it. You depend on people, and they leave.”

“Not everybody leaves, Hawk.”

 “Sure they do. I’ve had people leaving me behind my whole life. First my mom, which… which couldn’t be helped, but she left, and I never got to say goodbye. And then Carlye, which was my fault. I couldn’t save Tommy. Even Trapper left. I _needed_ him, Beej. I fucking _relied_ on him, and he left anyway… and he didn’t even say goodbye. And there’s gonna be a day when you’ll leave me. The war won’t last forever, you know. It’s temporary. There won’t be anything left keeping us together, so you’ll go home to Peg, and I’ll go home to Maine. Only you’ll get to go home from the war, and I don’t think I ever will.”

Beej pulls Hawk in tighter, wishing he could somehow protect the man he loves, wishing he could find a way to prove that he won’t go anywhere unless Hawk is by his side. Wishing he could tell him that no, the war won’t last forever, but _they_ will. “You must think very little of me if you think I’m just gonna walk away when it’s all over,” he says, and is rewarded with a wavery chuckle (to BJ’s trained ear, it sounds like it verges on a sob).

 “Of course you will, Beej.”

“You won’t be able to shake me that easily, Hawk.” He kisses the top of Hawk’s head, trying to be the anchor that Hawk is so desperately searching for (the anchor he’s been searching for his entire life). “I’m here, as long as you need me. And besides, you think this isn’t mutual?”

Hawk freezes, and for a second, it’s so quiet that BJ can hear both of their hearts beating. “What isn’t?”

“You say you need me. Well, where the hell would I be if I didn’t have you, Hawk?”

“Somewhere better than here. But then, that could be anywhere.”

BJ shakes his head. “I need you too, Hawk. So much that it should scare me. But it doesn’t.”

“It should. I’m a terrible person to depend on.”

“That’s where you’re wrong.”

“That’s where I’m right. I can barely look after myself most days. What makes you think you can depend on me?”

“Experience,” BJ tells him. “You’re always there, right when I need you, and sometimes even before I know that you’re what I need. And it’s been like that since day one. You’re the last person I expected to find here, and yet meeting you was… it was like coming home, Hawk.”

“For me too,” Hawk says softly, and BJ reaches out in the darkness, touching a hand to Hawk’s cheek.

“You’re the last person I expected to need. The last person I expected to love. But I found you, and I’m so glad I did.” Impulsively, he lifts Hawk’s hand to his mouth and kisses it tenderly, aching for a way to tell Hawk that whatever this is, it isn’t temporary, that he needs him as much as he needs Peggy, but the words don’t come. So instead he leans his forehead against Hawk’s, and thanks God for giving him Hawkeye, because having Hawkeye is the one constant in a war filled with variables.  

Hawk is warm against him in the darkness, the two of them huddled under a couple of blankets, and they’re silent for a few minutes, until finally Hawk admits in a small voice, “I really don’t mind needing someone if that someone is you.”

BJ laughs and kisses Hawk on the forehead. “Ditto.”


End file.
